heaven.

"Do not stay dreaming thus," she said, "but listen to me!" This was not
said with the accent of one who loves, and affects a sportive
seriousness, but with the tone of a still youthful mother, or an elder
sister counselling a brother or a son. "I do not wish you to attach
yourself to a false appearance, a delusion, a dream; I wish you to know
her to whom you so rashly pledge a heart which she could only retain by
deceiving you. Falsehood has always been so odious and so impossible to
me, that I could not desire the supreme felicity of heaven, if I must
enter heaven by deceit. Stolen happiness would not be happiness for me,
it would be remorse."

As she spoke, there was so much candor on her lips, so much sincerity
in her tone, and limpid purity in her eyes, that I fancied as I looked
at her that under her pure and lovely form I saw immortal Truth, in the
broad light of day, pouring her voice into the ear, her look into the
eye, and her soul into the heart. I stretched myself on the hay at her
feet and, with my elbow leaning on the ground, I rested my head upon my
hand; my eyes were riveted upon her lips, of which I strove not to lose
a single motion, a single modulation, or a single sigh.




XIX.


"I was born," she said, "in the same land as Virginia (for the poet's
fancy has given a real birthplace to his dream), in an island of the